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Percy Bysshe Shelley

1792–1822 · Poet

The mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness.
Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, "I will compose poetry." The greatest poet even cannot say it; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness.
Percy Bysshe Shelley · A Defence of Poetry, 1821

Read it in the source →

Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote this in A Defence of Poetry in 1821, a year before he drowned off the Italian coast. No one, he argued, can simply decide to compose a poem: inspiration flares and fades like a coal in the wind, and by the time composition begins it is already declining.

The essay was not published until 1840, when his widow Mary Shelley printed it.

A Defence of Poetry (written 1821, published 1840). Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments, ed. Mrs. [Mary] Shelley (London: Edward Moxon, 1840), vol. 1, pp. 47–48.

The originals

Portrait of the young Percy Bysshe Shelley with dark hair and an open white collar — **The likeness**PAINTED BY AMELIA CURRAN · 1819Our portrait is painted after it.Public domain (painter died 1847; NPG 1234; Commons tags it PD and notes third-party claims over NPG photos).

The title page of Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments by Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by Mrs. Shelley, volume two — **Essays and Letters, 1840**Mary Shelley's 1840 edition of his prose, in two volumes. Volume one first printed A Defence of Poetry, written in 1821; this is volume two.Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments, ed. Mrs. Shelley, vol. II (London: Edward Moxon, 1840), title page. Public domain, Google Books scan via Wikimedia Commons.